The Dark Lady's Mask

by Mary Sharratt

  It would take so little, she thought. Just a single look of regret. Will only had to speak her name or ask where she was riding in such haste. If he revealed his heart in any way. Her own heart was pounding hard enough to knock her out of the saddle.

  Paolo glanced from Will to her then hung his head, as if silenced. The Weir sisters remained motionless.

  Even now Aemilia longed to smooth Will’s hair with her fingers, to caress the stubble on his chin and tease him about growing a beard. True love could turn back time. They had never quarreled. He had never scorned her. That single moment of waiting, not daring to breathe, seemed to stretch into eternity.

  Until Will blinked and looked away, as if unable to hold her yearning gaze. His shoulders stiffened, as though to shield himself from her love. His remorse over his son had poisoned his heart, and he could not lay down his bitterness, and now, in his mind, Aemilia seemed to be tangled up inextricably with his darkest sense of guilt. Only severance could heal that. Perhaps that was what they both needed to keep themselves from going mad.

  Aemilia kicked the mule’s flanks and set off at a jarring trot, leaving Will behind so he wouldn’t see the tears streaming down her face. It felt like an age since she had last sat in the saddle. This is what freedom feels like. Don’t you remember? She didn’t know whether to laugh or howl. A masterless pregnant woman riding across Europe, just as Anne Locke had done when fleeing to Geneva with pregnant Catherine Willoughby.

  Will’s only power was in leaving, she told herself. Leaving Anne and his three children. Running away from Harry’s midnight revels rather than stay and be mocked by the Earl’s friends. Now he was bent on leaving her, except she had beaten him at his own game. Let him discover how it felt to be the one left behind.

  Though Aemilia wouldn’t allow herself to look back, she slowed her mule to a walk and pricked her ears. If he called out to her, if he came running, she would have stopped. She would have hurled herself into his arms.

  A TOMBLIKE HOLLOW FILLED Aemilia’s chest where her heart used to be. By noon, they were within view of the Lago di Garda where her party and their animals would travel by ferry to the northern end of that long lake. On the other side, they would begin their trek across the Alps, before selling the mules and sailing up the Rhine and its tributaries until they reached the English Channel. They would follow the same route as the overland traders—Aemilia had the maps in her saddlebag. She was determined to arrive back in England before Will did. He wouldn’t be able to stage the merest outline of one of the plays without her knowledge.

  While Winifred and Prudence remained silent, Tabitha couldn’t seem to shut her mouth. The young woman was both tearful and querulous. “How can you just abandon the vineyard, mistress? What will happen to it now?”

  “Let it be sweet Giulietta’s dowry,” Aemilia said. “Perhaps she will find happiness there.”

  “Are we truly going to cross the mountains on muleback? Paolo said it wasn’t safe to travel without a man.” Wide-eyed as a hare, Tabitha traded glances with her sisters.

  Even Winifred looked as though she were having second thoughts.

  “You shall have your man,” Aemilia said.

  Tabby was speechless as her mistress slipped from the saddle and stripped off her skirt to reveal the breeches she was wearing beneath. Just like the courtesan in Harry’s favorite piece of pornography. She removed her bodice and replaced it with her boned and padded doublet that would hide her pregnancy for a few more months if she was lucky. Finally, she strapped her sword and rapier around her waist.

  She looked up to see Enrico in Tabby’s arms. Her son was staring at her in confusion. Mounting up again, she rode alongside Tabitha and took Enrico in her arms, balancing him in front of her on the saddle, singing to him until he relaxed, his weight settling against her.

  “Henry,” Aemilia said, calling her son by his English name.

  Leaning back in the saddle, she rode the sure-footed mule downhill toward the shining lake. Beyond it, the snowcapped Dolomites rose like a crown. Once she passed those peaks, she would never see Italy again.

  V

  Unblind Your Eyes

  22

  HE OCTOBER SKY LASHED down rain as if to drown the whole world. Huddled under the wherry’s canvas canopy, Aemilia braced her body against the cold and damp. Squeezed around Aemilia’s skirts, young Henry and the Weir sisters sagged and shivered while the wherryman struggled to row up the Thames toward Westminster.

  Over eight weeks had passed since they left Italy. It seemed impossible for Aemilia to believe that she had ever known drought and searing heat, or that she had once been so blissfully in love. Yet the evidence traveled with her in her swelling belly that made a mockery of any attempt at male disguise. One hand on her womb, Aemilia felt the patter of her child’s limbs as though the unborn babe were trying to converse with her. What kind of future could she give her child? Such were the questions that had once sent her to Simon Forman the astrologer.

  With numb fingers, she opened the fustian pouch and spilled out the tarocchi cards Will had bought for her in Venice—which seemed a lifetime ago. Her tears fell upon the gilded pictures of female knights riding into battle, of the female pope with her triple tiara. Such images of power and authority sent her sinking even deeper into the void of uncertainty. She clutched at La Stella, the card of the golden-haired maiden reaching to cup a star in her palm.

  Never had Aemilia felt more alone, ashamed to show her face to Jasper. In two and a half months, she would give birth. That meant she had about ten weeks to locate Alfonse and reconcile with him—assuming he had returned from his sea voyage. If Alfonse had hated her before, how would he treat her now?

  Aemilia’s hands shook as she stuffed the tarocchi cards back into their pouch. You have the plays, she reminded herself. Let the stars be kind for once. Let the plays provide her children’s future fortune.

  THE WEIR SISTERS HARDLY lifted their gaze from the rain-swollen Thames while Aemilia paid the wherryman. Only young Henry gaped with huge eyes at this drenched world with its dripping buildings of gray stone.

  Aemilia carried her son while slinging a satchel over one arm.

  Stepping off the Westminster landing, she set her jaw and led the way up the muddy street. The Weir sisters hefted the bags and boxes that contained their own and their mistress’s worldly belongings. Tabitha muttered quietly, as though she were praying.

  “Cold,” Henry said, his teeth chattering. “I want to go home.”

  “This is your home,” Aemilia told him. “You are an Englishman born. The grandson of a King.”

  Trudging up the Westminster streets toward Longditch, Aemilia flinched under the eyes of old neighbors, familiar grocers, and market women who would spread the gossip that Mistress Lanier had returned from God-knows-where with a huge belly. She yanked up her hood to hide her face.

  WHEN THEY REACHED THE back gate of the house Aemilia thought she had left behind forever, it was unlocked. With a sharp inhalation, she entered her neglected wasteland of a garden that was overrun by weeds. The wisteria-clad vineyard villa shimmered in her memory to taunt her with everything she had lost.

  “Look, mistress.” Winifred pointed at the thin sputter of smoke rising from the chimney. “The master must be home.”

  Aemilia passed Henry to Tabitha before she moved forward. What could she possibly tell Alfonse? The two of them had barely managed to restrain themselves from murdering each other even before she had run away to Italy. How could they possibly live under the same roof now that she was pregnant with her second bastard?

  She wrenched open the door and stumbled into her kitchen only to find a doxy with carmine-smeared cheeks straddling a fat, bald man. The man was not Alfonse. His eyes lit on Aemilia and the Weir sisters.

  “Hey ho, what sport!” he cried. “More wenches come to join in!”

  Aemilia covered her son’s eyes and prepared to flee, but Winifred charged past her with a bucket of cold rain water from
the garden. With a bellow that split the air, Winifred doused the rutting couple. Doxy and swain fell apart, sprawling ingloriously on the filthy rushes. Their curses flew like arrows.

  “I’ll show you sport, I will,” Winifred said, looming over the man who groped to hide his now piteously shriveled member. She aimed her booted foot at his privates. “Out of my mistress’s kitchen before I geld you, sirrah!”

  Gibbering, he scrambled to his feet and scarpered out the door as if his feet were on fire.

  “What about my payment?” the doxy screamed after him. “You promised me five shillings!”

  “Five shillings? For the likes of you?” Winifred threw back her head and roared.

  Smiling thinly, the doxy took her time lacing up her bodice. “And who might you lot be?”

  Aemilia stepped forward. “I am Mistress Lanier.” She attempted to speak with some semblance of authority. “This is my house. You aren’t welcome here. Now go.”

  “Ooh, so it’s Mistress Laa-nee-yay,” the doxy said, drawing out the syllables in a singsong. “So you decided to return to your miserable waste of a husband after all. You’re welcome to that French dunghill, you are, madam.” She minced her way smartly across the littered floor to gather up various baskets containing her belongings—she had clearly been staying for a while. “Good riddance to the both of you. Frankly speaking,” she said, snorting at the sight of Aemilia’s pregnant belly, “I’d say you deserve each other.”

  Grabbing her cloak from the hook by the door, she turned to Winifred.

  “See you in hell, fat sow!” the doxy spat, dashing away before Winifred could clout her.

  “Just look at our kitchen!” Tabitha wailed, kicking at the gnawed bones and soiled rags strewn among the rushes.

  Winifred grabbed a broom and started sweeping the foul rushes into the fire. “Some work it will take to get this house in order.”

  “Bless me, my herbs are still here!” Prudence smiled up at the dried leaves and flowers hanging from the beams.

  Before Aemilia could shut the door, the old gray cat burst in and launched itself at Prudence, rubbing its head into her skirts and purring.

  “Graymalkin!” Pru reached down to stroke it.

  Then, from above the herb-hung beams, Aemilia heard a drawn-out groan. Alfonse? She and Winifred locked eyes. Aemilia led the way up the stairs followed by Winifred and Prudence while Tabitha stayed in the kitchen with little Henry.

  Aemila’s heart thudded sickly as she forced herself down the corridor. The bedchamber door was ajar, but even before she reached it, the stench broadsided her. The sight awaiting her was even worse than the smell.

  There, in her marriage bed, tangled in a piss-stinking blanket, lay Alfonse, his eyes glazed in fever, his emaciated body so full of boils that he couldn’t stir from the bed. Lesions and crusts covered his face, his palms, and his soles. Her heart split to see him lying naked in his own excrement as though he were an animal left to die all alone. A skeleton coated in pustules, he resembled some creature from Anne Locke’s most horrific vision of hell.

  Her husband gazed up at her as though she were an apparition. As though he were already halfway down that passage between life and death.

  “Dear God,” Aemilia said. “Just look at you.”

  She couldn’t keep herself from weeping as she reached to take his hand, but Prudence grabbed her wrists. “You mustn’t touch him, mistress, or you’ll infect yourself and the baby.”

  Aemilia shook her head in bewilderment. “I see no buboes.”

  “Mistress, it’s the great pox,” said Pru. “That strumpet—or one like her—gave him the disease.”

  Aemilia stared at her husband in disbelief. As though racked in shame, Alfonse raised his arms to hide his face.

  “But we can’t just leave him to lie in his own filth.” Aemilia ached to comfort him even as Prudence and Winifred held her back. “Is there nothing we can do?”

  “We’ll make him as comfortable as we can,” said Prudence. “I can’t cure his pox, but I can try to break the fever. He’ll need broth and clean linens. We’ll have to burn these bedclothes and the mattress as well.”

  “When was the last time that disgusting creature fed you?” Aemilia asked her husband.

  Uncovering his eyes, Alfonse seemed to regard her in a state of shock, as though not trusting his senses. “Have you truly returned?”

  “Aye, and I’ll look after you and nurse you as best I can,” she said. “But, by God, don’t ever ask me to share your bed.”

  AEMILIA SANK ON THE kitchen bench and held her head in her hands. Now, besides having a son to feed and another child on the way, she had a husband with the great pox. At least they’d had a reconciliation of sorts. In the haze of his illness, Alfonse seemed to have not even noticed her pregnancy.

  Prudence had taken his care upon herself, not letting Aemilia or her sisters near him. If, through Prudence’s potions and poultices, Alfonse recovered from his fever and crippling pains, if the boils themselves shrank and healed, would he be able to work again or would Aemilia have to turn to his family in Greenwich for help? Alfonse’s stepmother, Aemilia’s own cousin, Lucrezia Bassano, would probably accuse her of infecting her husband. Aemilia’s head throbbed.

  Even the plays were no use to her until she had the funds to rent a playhouse and pay the actors. Only one person could help her. Though she was huge with child, she would have to squeeze herself into her best gown and swallow her pride.

  She rummaged through the boxes until she found her lap desk. After cutting a fresh quill, she set ink to paper and wrote her beseeching letter. When the ink had dried, she sealed the missive with wax and pressed it into Winifred’s huge hand.

  “Deliver this to Somerset House, if you please.”

  Somerset House, Lord Hunsdon’s palace on the Strand.

  WITH PRUDENCE UPSTAIRS TENDING Alfonse, Aemilia helped Tabitha and Winifred turn the house upside down, scouring away any traces of the cursed doxy and her men. Winifred lifted the floorboards, revealing where the Weir sisters had safely stowed the pewter, iron cooking pots, and rolled-up wall hangings before their exodus to Italy.

  “Our Pru had an inkling we’d be back,” Winifred said smugly, as she shook out the rolls of painted cloth and hung them back up in the scrubbed-down parlor.

  When the house was in order, they laundered Aemilia’s best gown then let out the seams and sewed in new panels to accommodate her belly. By this time, a fortnight had passed and Aemilia had still heard no word from Lord Hunsdon. Just as she began to fear he wouldn’t deign to reply at all, a letter arrived saying he would visit the following day.

  “I’M AS HUGE AS a whalefish,” Aemilia lamented, while Winifred laced her into her gown.

  “At least you finally have some cleavage,” Winifred commented, while arranging her mistress’s freshly washed hair.

  Tabitha handed Aemilia the near-empty vial of attar of roses so that she might perfume her breasts and neck. She hung Aemilia’s pearls around her throat.

  Tabby and Winifred stepped back to appraise her.

  “From the bosom up, you do look a picture,” said Winifred, pinching Aemilia’s cheeks for good measure. “Try to smile. Act blithe and bonny for Lord Hunsdon.”

  Aemilia thought of the screaming doxy and wondered if she were any less the whore, having to preen like this to seek the favor of her former lover. What would Lord Hunsdon do when confronted with her pregnancy? This very house was his property. If she fell from his good graces, he had the power to turn her out on the street.

  AEMILIA PACED THE PARLOR, her heart pounding out a saltarello. She clasped her trembling hands.

  “My Lord Hunsdon,” she heard herself say when Winifred showed her former lover into the room.

  Not daring at first to meet his eyes, she dropped in a deep curtsy.

  “Mistress Lanier.” He bent to kiss her hand. “How curious to receive your invitation after all this time. I see that at long last you have returned to o
ur fair isle, and in a different state than when you left if I’m not mistaken.”

  So tall that his head nearly scraped the beams, Lord Hunsdon studied her with the expertise of a man whose wife had borne him no fewer than sixteen children.

  “You’re carrying so high and close to your heart, I’ll wager it’s a girl.”

  Aemilia burned under his scrutiny. There was no point in dissembling or trying to pass off the baby as Alfonse’s, for the entire court knew Alfonse was at sea with the Earl of Essex’s expedition when the child was conceived.

  “Motherhood is a woman’s great joy,” she told Lord Hunsdon. “The solace of a woman unhappily wed.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You sought solace in adultery, you mean.”

  Aemilia closed her eyes. The only way forward was to speak with courage. “My lord, you married me off to a dissolute fool. Alfonse returned from his voyage penniless and full of the French pox. He lies bedridden upstairs if you wish to see for yourself. You can be assured he didn’t catch the disease from me.”

  While Lord Hunsdon stared at her, Aemilia studied him in turn. How he had aged since she’d seen him last, nearly two years ago. He had always been a vigorous man, young for his years, hunting and hawking, outriding men forty years his junior. But now she noted a vulnerability in him, a creeping frailty that hadn’t been there before, the skin around his piercing eyes gone as thin and transparent as wet paper. His hair and beard, which had remained the palest red gold until the day he had ended their affair, had gone stark white. Before her she saw a seventy-year-old man who recognized the inevitability of his own death.

  “No,” he said decisively. “Lanier didn’t catch the pox from you. I see you are in the full bloom of health. My dark rose.”